


An Apple in the American Pie

by Kimra



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attack on a Pregnant Person, Happy Ending, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mpreg, No Harm to any child/baby/emrbyo, On the Run, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-26 18:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20746499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimra/pseuds/Kimra
Summary: At the end of CAWS Steve runs off with Bucky, and also falls pregnant. Go figure.





	An Apple in the American Pie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).

> Please note the warnings.

Steve isn’t sure how it happened, well he knows _how_... no he doesn’t know how.

“How did this happen?” he insists of the doctor Bucky’s holding at gunpoint. The gun, Steve thinks, is not necessary, but Bucky’s still teetering on the edge of brainwashed assassin so Steve’s not going to mention it. Besides, the gun in the room is hardly the largest concern.

“Well I assume-” The doctor stops, stares haplessly at Steve, then makes a vague and inarticulate hand motion. Bucky makes a tick noise of annoyance and the hands still and settle onto the table in plain sight. “This may seem like an obvious question but, you are Captain America, are you not?” He asks and Steve almost wants to say no, because they are on the run, but Bucky didn’t drag him into this doctor’s surgery at 9pm when all the other staff had gone home because he was bored. He’d done it because Steve’s body is doing things it shouldn’t and if it’s not stitches and battlefield triage they’re both useless medically.

“Yes.” Steve smiles tightly at the doctor.

The doctor looks pained, but he’s tracking Bucky more than Steve. “They ah,” he raises his hand to make a vague motion and Bucky shifts his weight, the doctors hand comes back to the table top quickly. “They experimented on you, didn’t they? Maybe they added-”

“No.” Steve cuts that off.

“Well you’re still pregnant!” The doctor snaps right back, offended. He seems to realise what he did a moment later and pales.

“Any way to prove it?” Bucky interrupts, and the doctor nods six or seven times before he actually sets to the task.

“Well,” Steve squints at the picture as Bucky clears the apartment and it still just looks like a grainy black and white nothing. “Are we sure this is real?” He checks with Bucky, but Bucky’s checking his traps and markers and Steve can tell from the stilted way he moves that he’s switched off until the task is done. He settles at the rickety table and stares at the print out some more.

He spends long enough staring at it that Bucky comes back to him on his own, the paper been tugged lightly from between his fingers. He lets it go, watching Bucky’s expression as he examines the ultrasound. There’s something scared there, cautious, but desperate too. Steve reads it as hope, desire for this new unexpected thing, and it settles something in him because this is Bucky. A few times over the last two months he’s lost sight of Bucky to the Winter Soldier and wondered if it was all a fever dream, but he always comes back.

“They didn’t-?” Bucky glances at Steve’s stomach and Steve just shrugs.

“I don’t think they knew.”

Bucky lets that go, “He’s going to tell people.” he says and meets Steve’s eyes. Steve grimaces but agrees. “We’ll have to move out.” Steve agrees with that too.

Bucky’s finds a small hovel in the back streets of Morocco and sets Steve down with a tv, an Arabic dictionary and a pile of books about the local area, all in Arabic. “Blend in.” Bucky orders and disappears out the door. Steve doesn’t find the baby book until he’s two books down. He has read more baby books in the last month than any sane person should and he knows Bucky’s read them all as well. This one is already a little worn with notes written into the pages. Steve reads them as he goes, leaning back on the headboard with a hand resting on the slight curve of his stomach. It’s becoming more pronounced every day, and he doesn’t think they’ll be able to hide it for much longer but Bucky doesn’t want to leave major cities and potential medical attention. Considering Steve’s still trying to figure out _how_ he’s going to give birth this isn’t something he disagrees with. But he knows he’s going to get antsy when he in his third trimester and going outside will become challenging.

He hears Bucky come in before he sees him, sees the reflection of him in a door and is setting the baby book onto the pile to his left when something hits him from behind.

He’s not expecting an attack, which is stupid stupid stupid, but he knows he’s under attack when the electricity cuts through his circulatory system and he his fingers clamp down on the useless book. He has one blind moment of panic before the pain subsides and he can move again.

Whoever they are, and there are twelve of them coming in through all the entrances, they don’t expect him to stay down but they don’t expect him to get up that quickly either. Steve uses that to his advantage, throws the book at the nearest assailant and lunges at the one with the taser. The others all have batons, no guns, high tack military gear. It’s not unlike the strike force, and it might even be what’s left of it for all Steve knows. All that matters is he take them down fast because he’s bigger and stronger, but the numbers are on their side and he can’t afford to be taken out.

The fight is brutal, they’re well trained, and even as he takes down one two more are closing in on him. He takes a baton to the head that sends him reeling, and sends one man straight out the window in retaliation. He’s not as good at using the environment to his advantage as Bucky is but he does what he can to thin the numbers. Then one of them lands a lucky hit to his stomach and Steve goes into panic mode because he’s got a serum to knit himself back together, but the baby... He blocks the next hit with his arm, takes a hit to the head instead, and it takes the trained team less than ten blows to realise that he’s protecting his mid.

“Holy shit,” one of them shouts over the melee, “he’s pregnant!” And the thing is, the doctor did talk, of course he did, but no-one believed him, it’d be swept up under a rug like all the other tabloid news stories, but before it was swept away _everyone_ had seen it. Whatever happens in the team attacking, though, changes quickly, and attacks start to be staggered between his midriff and head, until he’s blocking more than countering and once they get him down he’s forced to curl into a ball like he did when he was smaller and the bullies wouldn’t stop kicking.

“Don’t kill it, don’t kill it. That’s gold fellas.” One of them shouts over the rain of blows, and Steve holds on tight, legs locked up over his stomach arms wrapped around them, and the moment they stop hitting him he’s going to break every bone in their body. Twice.

But he doesn’t have to, because between one blow and the next a gun goes off. Then methodically, efficiently, it goes off again and again and again and again until the room goes still and all Steve can hear is his own harsh breathing. He knows he has to move, he’s cut his teeth on getting up when he should stay down, but no-ones kicking him now and he doesn’t _need_ to move, so he holds still, breathes shakily and reminds himself that he’s okay. The baby is okay. He needs it to be. It’s only been a month since he found out, it should be the size of a small apple. His belly’s started to get softer and rounder. If it’s not okay he’s going to show them the kind of things you learnt when fighting a world war in slow excruciating detail.

“Steve.” Someone touches him, and he flinches. The hands draws back as if burnt, and whoever it is takes the time to walk around in front of him and crouch down. “Steve,” they repeat and a hand reaches out in front of him, not a human hand, but one made of cold metal plates. He recognises that hand better than his own. “We need to go.” Bucky says, and Steve reaches out and grabs Bucky’s hand, lets himself be hoisted into a stand and doesn’t look at the carnage of the room. He looks at Bucky, and Bucky alone.

“Are they all dead?” He checks.

“Double tapped.” Bucky doesn’t look happy or sad over this, but Steve knows he feels relief. Relief because they were the only ones who _knew_ who had _seen_ and now they couldn’t tell anyone. Couldn’t tell Hydra, or Shield, or anyone else who would realise the potential weapon holding Captain America and the Winter Soldier’s baby could be.

“We need to leave.” Steve says instead, and wills himself to clear the room. Bucky clears the room faster than he’s ever cleared one before, like keeping his attention on anything else but Steve is too much, but Steve picks up the baby book and tucks it into his duffle, flips through the other books to make sure there’s nothing else he needs to take and then pulls on a loose jacket to hide the swell of his belly and follows Bucky out onto the street.

Bucky finds them a yacht. It belongs to someone, presumably not them, but Bucky’s pulled a bunch of the wiring out and has sailed it out onto the open ocean within two hours of the attack. Steve appreciates the efficiency, but he also appreciates the solitude.

They wait on the deck, Steve with his hand protectively over his belly while Bucky decides on their next destination. He’ll have to see a doctor, Steve knows, for his own sanity they’re going to have to bring a doctor in on this. But he really doesn’t know any doctors in this century who don’t draw more attention than privacy. Banner, for example, will only point a spotlight on them but is also the wrong kind of doctor.

They pick Ireland and head out. Steve tries to sleep because he knows he’s thinking for two but after three hours of staring at the roof, the soft lap of waves against the hull, and a cloudless sky out the porthole he gives up. Bucky exactly where he left him on deck but he’s laying across the deck star gazing. There are no weapons in sight and he’s in civilian clothes. Steve looks at the desolation around the and makes some strategic choices of his own.

He lays down beside Bucky and relaxes. It’s the quietest moment they’ve had since they both found out and as the minutes drag on and he still can’t sleep he gets bold. One time, about four months ago he’d been daring and brave and things had gone so quickly from maybe to life changing that he’s still not quite able to believe it happened. In retrospect it had been too fast, too soon after pulling his best friend back from Hydras control. He didn’t regret it and he didn’t think Bucky did either but they also didn’t talk about it. In the silence of a world empty of spectators Steve felt brave again.

“Steve,” Bucky protests, but he slides his hand over Steve’s waist and returns the kiss when Steve moves over him.

It’s gentle in a way it hadn’t been the other time. Careful fingers, metal and flesh, questing out traces of skin wherever they can find them. Mouths sliding against each other, learning what the other likes, learning what they like. Steve’s happy too, a soft flush of contentment that blurs out all other emotions, takes away questions about tomorrow and the day after, and from one languid kiss to the other the outside world fades away. Bucky pushes Steve’s shirt up and over his head so he can reach more skin running hands over his back, his sides, his shoulders.

Bucky’s hand moves to the curve of Steve’s abdomen and Steve feels Bucky go still below him so he pulls back, looks down at that point of contact, metal fingers cradling the small protrusion and he gets angry at the world, and more desperate than ever to do this _right_.

He covers Bucky’s hand and presses down as he pulls back and lays himself out on the damp wooden deck. Bucky follows like there’s an invisible pull keeping them locked together, straddles Steve’s legs to keep his hand trapped right where it is, and with all the access in the world his other hand settles over the bump. It’s barely anything, if Steve didn’t know his own body so well he might not have even be able to see it. But he does, and from the way Bucky runs his hand over the space, reverent and cautious, Steve thinks Bucky does too.

“It’s okay, isn’t it?” Bucky asked, cracked voice, and Steve has to pull one of Bucky’s hands up to his mouth to kiss the tension out of his fingers.

“It’s okay.” Steve promises.

“It’s so small,” Bucky sounds pained, “how can you be sure?” He bows his back to press his forehead against that tiny part of Steve, his entire focus, every part of him zeroed in on the child Steve knows is still growing in there. 

Steve pushes the hair back behind Bucky’s ears and the man looks up at him, cautious. “I’m sure, Buck.” He promises again. “I froze up and curled into a ball before they could get a hit in.”

“You didn’t freeze,” Bucky argues but there’s affection there, “you prioritised.”

Steve smiles, endeared despite himself, and he leads Bucky back up to his mouth with the slightest tug on a lose strand of hair. “Now stop mooning over our baby and kiss me again.” He insists, and Bucky obliges, even if his hands do stray back down like they need to be reminded that it’s still there.

Steve comes home from his first run in four months sweating and exhilarated. They’d picked out a small cottage not too far from a main city but far enough that no-one would come knocking without them hearing it from a mile away. Bucky’s dug in with spider holes, a security system, and the kind of traps that makes Steve worry that someone might accidently wander into their little corner of the world and lose a limb.

He ducks in through the door and finds Bucky asleep on the lounge their baby curled up on his chest. Steve freezes, instinct not to make a noise but also the need to soak in the image. They breath in synch, a constant rise and fall of both their chests, nestled together against the outdoors, safe right now in this little piece of freedom they’ve stolen away and there is nothing Steve wants more than to keep this forever.


End file.
